


XI. With the Door Wide Open, No One Can Leave

by BubblyWashingMachine



Series: Every Little Hurt Counts [febuwhump 2021] [11]
Category: The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: Angst, Crying, FebuWhump2021, Febuwhump, Gen, Ghosts, Hallucinations, Heavy Angst, Hurt No Comfort, Hurt Number Five | The Boy, Infection, Number Five | The Boy Needs A Hug, Number Five | The Boy Whump, Number Five | The Boy-centric, collect call is such a good apocalypse five song, febuwhumpday11, five being sad, it's collect call by metric, oh the prompt is, the name i mean
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-11
Updated: 2021-02-11
Packaged: 2021-03-17 15:47:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,203
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29352933
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BubblyWashingMachine/pseuds/BubblyWashingMachine
Summary: “I’m here,” Ben says. “But you gotta stay awake, though, okay?”“I don’t want to,” Five sobs. He clenches his fists and shuts his eyes, but the emotion won’t go away, and he feels like he’s suffocating. He’s so hot and so cold. His leg hurts so much. “I give up already. I just wanna go home.”Ben sighs deeply, sympathetically. “I know. We – we understand, if you want to give up. We’re all waiting, if that’s what you want.”“You’re all here?”“Yeah, everyone’s here,” Ben says softly....At the edge of time, little Number Five gets to talk with Ben.
Relationships: Dolores & Number Five | The Boy (Umbrella Academy), Number Five | The Boy & Ben Hargreeves, Number Five | The Boy & Vanya Hargreeves, Number Five | The Boy (Umbrella Academy) & Everyone
Series: Every Little Hurt Counts [febuwhump 2021] [11]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2137428
Comments: 20
Kudos: 139





	XI. With the Door Wide Open, No One Can Leave

**Author's Note:**

> Hey hi hello! Hope you enjoyed your nice happy fluff yesterday, because today we're back on the ANGST TRAIN!
> 
> I would also like to say thank you so much to everyone who leaves comments, I appreciate it so much and reading them sometimes actually makes me cry,,, I'm also really sorry that I'm not good at responding to them because I have to like, really think about my response you know?? And lately I have gotten an actual job so when I'm not doing hours of spreadsheets then I'm frantically writing the day's fic and then I'm too tired to respond to comments and instead just re-read them happily before bed,, I promise I read them all and they make me so happy and proud and I WILL respond to them all EVENTUALLY!
> 
> Anyway this is... sad. um. enjoy

Five isn’t stupid. He knows he’s dying.

He knows it in a different, far more intimate way than how most people do, because his death isn’t something that will happen in some distant, easy to compartmentalize scenario. It is something that is currently happening to him right now, slow, excruciating, and miserable.

It’s the infection, he thinks. His leg’s all wrong. It throbs.

He’s been laying in the same makeshift camp for a while now – maybe three days. He likes to keep count, usually, but sometimes when he wakes up now it’s dark and sometimes when he wakes up it’s the middle of the day.

He thinks that maybe he’s lost count. He hasn’t told Dolores yet, but she must know. She’s just too nice to say anything about it.

“You need water,” Dolores tells him now, sounding worried. It’s sweet. She always frets over him, even though he’s the one always taking care of her. She’s breakable, you see, and she can’t walk. Five doesn’t mind.

“Don’t have any left,” he reminds her, voice hoarse. It’s okay. She probably forgot. Even though he ran out of water a while ago – a day? More? He still keeps sweating. He wonders if that’s bad and decides it probably is.

He shivers, teeth clacking against each other and sending his brain rattling around in his skull. Oh, God. He’s really dying. He climbed up that stupid hill and cut his leg and he’s lasted four and a half goddamn years in this hell-hole, why is this the final straw? After everything?

“Five, you have to get up,” she says. “You need to change your bandages and find some better shelter and some water and—”

“I know,” he moans. “I know, okay? Shut up.” He’ll move in a second. He will. He has to.

She is silent, and regret instantly floods through him. He’s hurt her feelings – he’s such a jackass. He moves his head to face her and it feels like shoving a boulder up a hill. He suddenly wants to throw up, but he can’t – he hasn’t eaten in a while.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean it,” he says when he musters up the air in his lungs, each word burning and scraping in his throat, hoping he’s not slurring too badly. “Dolores?”

She doesn’t say anything, just gazes absently at the sky and the sinking sun, and humiliatingly, Five feels the urge to cry. He squeezes his eyes shut and takes a deep shuddering breath. Of course she doesn’t fucking say anything. She’s a _fucking_ mannequin.

God. This is so _shit_.

He’s sick of being alone.

He just wants to see them again.

He just wants to go home.

Maybe…

_“Five, come on, come on, stay awake, you can do it,”_ calls a very faint voice. A man’s voice. Five peels his eyelids open and lurches up, but doesn’t quite make it. He lands on his back again.

“Who said that,” he asks the empty world, his voice coming out smaller and weaker than he would’ve liked.

_“It’s just me.”_

Five whines, the tears bubbling up again and stinging. He’s imagining things again. That’s dangerous. “Stop. Stop it.”

_“Sorry, buddy.”_

He knows that voice, and he inhales sharply and then coughs hard. The feeling hurts somewhere deep in his chest wet and loud. The coughing exhausts him, and he shivers again and sobs dryly. Ow. “Ben,” he says.

_“That’s right,”_ Ben’s voice says, and Five thinks he sees him crouching there beside him, but the sun is in his eyes. _“You with me, Five?”_

“You’re here,” Five whispers. That’s all he can manage.

_“I’m here,”_ Ben says, smiling very, very sadly. _“We’re all here.”_

Five feels his face crumple, his throat hurting and the second heartbeat thrumming in his leg where he got cut. “Hurts,” he says pathetically, feeling tears leak down his cheek and keep going until they stop uncomfortably in his ear. What a waste of water, he thinks.

_“I know,”_ Ben murmurs kindly, emotion clogging in his voice, reaching out and putting a cold, cold hand on Five’s forehead. He appreciates it. _“I’m so sorry.”_

“I miss you,” Five admits, shaky.

_“I’m here,”_ Ben says. _“But you gotta stay awake, though, okay?”_

“I don’t want to,” Five sobs. He clenches his fists and shuts his eyes, but the emotion won’t go away, and he feels like he’s suffocating. He’s so hot and so cold. His leg hurts _so much._ “I give up already. I just wanna go home.”

Ben sighs deeply, sympathetically. _“I know. We – we understand, if you want to give up. We’re all waiting, if that’s what you want.”_

“You’re all here?”

_“Yeah, everyone’s here,”_ Ben says softly. Ben, who’s dead. Who died when he was seventeen because Five never came home, wasn’t there to save him. Because Five left.

“Vanya?”

_“She’s here.”_

His voice wobbles. “Hi Vanya. I’m sorry I left.”

_“She says hi back. And she wants me to tell you that – that she forgives you, and she loves you so, so much, and she’s sorry. And – slow down, I’m telling him – that she’s proud of you.”_

“I love you too,” Five chokes out, biting his lip hard. He imagines Vanya, Luther, Diego, Ben, Allison, and Klaus all huddled around him, not as the adults he found when he arrived here but as the kids he remembers. His brothers and sisters, his friends. “All of you. I’ll see you soon.”

_“Okay, little bro. You did so well, Five, you made it so far. It’s okay if you’re tired. We’ll be waiting, yeah? We love you.”_

And he can feel himself slipping, because it would be so easy, so easy to close his eyes and end the pain and the suffering. He misses them too much. It feels like he might die of it. “No,” Five gasps suddenly in a moment of clarity. “No, I have to stop this. I need to go back. Back in time – I’m going to go home.”

_“Five…”_

“I can’t,” he says, gritting his teeth even as his body shakes with shivers. “I can’t give up. I have to save you.”

_“It’s okay,”_ Ben soothes. _“You don’t have to. You can rest if you want. We don’t mind.”_

But Five has never, not ever, really been able to rest. “I have to go back,” he cries out hoarsely.

Silence.

Five opens his eyes with effort but the sun has moved, and he can no longer see Ben’s face. No, no, no. He can’t be alone again. He just can’t.

Coughing weakly, panicking, he tries to sit up too suddenly, sending his head spinning and crashing and pain shoots between his eyes and then everything is dark.

When he wakes up, his fever has broken.

When he can sit up, he crawls painstakingly over to Dolores and wraps his arms tightly around her and cries into her hard, smooth shoulder and pretends that she says, _“Shh, it’s okay, it’s okay.”_ He cries until his head feels empty and then he crosses three days off in his calendar.

In the distance, behind buildings silhouetted and casting long grey shadows across the devastated landscape, the sun is rising once again.

It’s just him and Dolores.

**Author's Note:**

> literally but why is Dot presented as a good guy in s2?? she happily watched him go through shit like this and was like "haha no hard feelings!" I know I literally already wrote a fic with that premise but whenever I think about her. I get so mad. Dot sucks, booooo
> 
> See you tomorrow!!! Tomorrow's is gonna be good I can feel it


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